Hi friends, welcome back! I feel like I always say this, but November was another busy, but great month! We have been getting settled in the new apartment, trying new restaurants, and getting into the holiday spirit. I spent time in Michigan decorating my parents’ house for Christmas and then we spent time in Atlanta with Jon’s family for Thanksgiving. I am always terrible at taking pictures when we see our family, but I managed two from Thanksgiving. Dinner was delicious and we were stuffed to the brim!
On to my post 🙂 I’ve been linking up with the first blogger I ever read, Shay Shull, for my What’s Up posts. Each month I’m answering the following questions:
What I’m eating: I’ll be sharing my Foodie Friday this week! I made my favorite cookie recipe finally. Not only are these delicious, but the combination of the brown butter and brown sugar will have your home smelling heavenly! If you make these I definitely recommend adding chocolate chips.
What I’m reminiscing about: in 2017 I experienced Christmas in NYC for the first time and was amazed! Five years later I feel like an expert, so if you’re coming to NYC this December make sure you check out my 2021 NYC Christmas Bucket List where I linked all the sights both on and off the beaten track. I’m also updating my 2022 Bucket List as I go 🙂
What I’m loving: it’s my favorite time of year, I absolutely love the holiday season! So far I’ve shared the dazzling Hudson Yards display but stay tuned for tons more!
I love these trees at the Bloomberg HQ.
Favorite post of the month: my Salzburg Fortress post was my 500th post! It seems like forever ago (Jan 2018) I started this blog and I’m proud of myself for keeping it up and staying consistent. I also want to thank you all for following along and encouraging me. It means so much that you all take time out of your day to read about my travels, eats, and all things NYC!
What I’m Up to: I’ve made my bucket list of all my NYC Christmas activities and now I’m taking in all the lights and displays and sharing it along the way 🙂 I’m not sure how many more years we will be living in NYC during Christmas (at least one more after this), so I’m extra determined to make the most of it. I’m also still trying to figure out the right setup for my Christmas decorations, but I’ll be sharing a tour soon! Here’s a little sneak peek 🙂
What I’m working on: I just finished my Germany and Austria series and loved reliving the memories and beautiful places! The next trip to plan is our trip to Italy that’s been three years in the making. I’ve dreamed of the day I can eat gelato in Italy, and it will be so sweet (pun intended) when that dream comes true!
What I’m excited about: I just reached 10,000 followers on my food Instagram account! I made the account on a whim two years ago and I’ve been fortunate to have met some great friends through it, and get invited to some really delicious restaurants in the city! I’ve worked hard staying consistent with it and learning how to make videos, so it’s very exciting to have hit such a big milestone.
What I’m watching/reading: we’ve been watching The Reboot on Hulu and enjoy it as well as Abbott Elementary on ABC, and Partner Track on Netflix. Now we are starting all our Christmas movies and love the new The Santa Clauses on Disney+. We’ve also been watching bits of the World Cup, my MSU Spartan basketball team, and lots of football. Lastly, I finally watched Notting Hill and thought it was very cute!
I started reading Christmas themed books that are basically like a Hallmark movie. It’s nice to end the year of reading on a light and happy note.
Books I read this month:
- Live Wire by Kelly Ripa
- Let It Snow by Nancy Thayer (This plot sounded familiar and I realized it was turned into the movie Nantucket Noel that we watched last year on the Hallmark Channel)
- Winter Street by Elin Hildebrand
What I’m doing this weekend: we are going to the NY Botanical Train show, watching some football, and I’m going to a yoga class at the Peloton Studio.
What I’m looking forward to next month: all the holiday magic and Santa coming to town 🙂
What are you looking forward to in December?
I am so excited to see more of your NYC Christmas content! I’m equally looking forward to exploring the light displays in my own city- there are some famous annual decorative spots and it’s such a nice tradition to visit them at this time of year. 🎄❄️💕
I hope you’ll feel like you’re experiencing a NYC Christmas through my posts 🙂 I agree, seeing the lights and decorations is a wonderful tradition.
You have been busy Lyssy. Glad you got some family, food and fun over Thanksgiving and so nice to help decorate your parents place. We have not done ours yet, but our kids have been decorating since November 15. They put up 7 or 8 trees and try to watch every Hallmark Christmas movie. We will likely start looking at Christmas movies this weekend. Thanks for sharing. Allan
I just beat them and decorated on November 7th 🙂 I am gone a lot, so I want more time to enjoy it. Wow that is a lot of trees, that sounds awesome! I put the Hallmark movies on as a joke and then sit there and watch them. We watched the Lindsey Lohan Netflix one and it was a lot better than I thought it would be. The first 20ish minutes are pretty cringey, but after that it’s a lot better.
I love all your beautiful ideas and attitude. Nice pictures too. Thank you.
Thank you!
I’m glad I “found” you from Shay’s blog comments! I’m looking forward to all your NYC at Christmas posts, so magical. I’ve been to NYC once during June with my sister, I need to come back soon! My next book is Winter Street! 🙂
I’m so happy you found me too 🙂 I hope that you feel like you’re experiencing the magic of a NYC Christmas through my posts! You do need to come back for a Christmas, or end of October is beautiful. I think next Christmas I’ll read the sequel to Winter Street 🙂
Oh, Lyssy! I wish I had your energy! Your tree looks gorgeous and I can almost smell those delicious cookies. Congratulations on your Instagram followers. That’s quite an accomplishment. I was Googling Christmas decor a while back and found one of your blog posts from last year. It’s obvious that you’re making an impact.
Thank you!! That is awesome, sometimes my posts get into the top page of google and I get very excited. I just love the Christmas season and being able to see all the beautiful decor!
We just bought our Christmas trees today. We always buy two real ones, one for the lounge and the other for the dining kitchen. They are both around 8ft tall and lovely and bushy. My husband is tasked with setting them upright in their bases and adding the lights and then I add all the baubles afterwards. I like to get them early to make the most of them as we are away a lot ! Enjoy decorating too!
I bet they make your house smell amazing! It’s funny how your baubles are what I call ornaments 🙂 I like putting them up early too, especially since we are usually gone for Thanksgiving and Christmas seeing our families. Happy decorating!
Congratulations on your 10,000 plus followers on Instagram. I’m looking forward to my pre-Xmas trip to Italy and Austria.
Thank you! I’m looking forward to reading about your trip and seeing all the gorgeous pics.
😎
You are a busy lady! Lots of fun things to talk about. Thanks for posting!
Glad you enjoyed!
Congratulations on reaching 10k followers on your IG account, on your 500th plus post, and more than anything on staying consistent and finding time and motivation to blog. The cookies look delicious, looking forward to the apartment tour once it’s fully decorated for the holidays. Enjoy December, which starts tomorrow if you can believe it.
Thank you!! I was always afraid I wouldn’t have anything interesting to blog about, but now I have content overload haha. Hopefully this weekend we can get things hung and my shelves will arrive so it doesn’t look like a white box. My gallery wall is quite the process and my table just looks incomplete without it. This year sure flew by!!!
New York City looks so magical during the holidays, thank you for always sharing these awesome spots to check out. Your cookie recipe looks really good. That is a great idea going into the holidays, and to make them for friends and family.
It’s so magical during the holidays! Lots of holiday cheer around here 🙂 Jon said those cookies are his favorite ever.
I’m reading Let It Snow right now; just started it today! It’s cute. Those cookies look amazing.
It’s nice to end the year with cute books! You had a big month of reading in November, I’m impressed! They’re our favorite cookies to have 🙂
I’m such a fan of the holiday season too. Even though the days feel shorter, at least we have all those colourful twinkling holiday lights to add some brightness and cheer. Congrats on reaching the 500 posts milestone!
Thank you! All the twinkling lights makes it feel so cozy. The short/dark days are very depressing in January.
Wow, so many things ahead! November was weirdly quiet for me, but that was maybe the universe preparing me for the whirlwind that December is going to be! Congrats for your 500th blog post! That’s really impressive!!
Thank you!! It’s nice to have a slow month before the holidays. December is always crazy, but fun!
I am looking forward to the Notre Dame hoops season because a) our football season did not live up to expectations (irrelevant bowl, here we come), and b) we just beat #20 Michigan State handily (sorry about that). Otherwise, I approve the “board” in the second photo and endorse your favorite cookie choice because I made them the last time you suggested it. Heavenly ingredients!
I think MSU has two injured starters so I’ll let that loss go 😉 As long as they’re all healthy in March! That board was very legit! Those cookies are so good!!